America's forsaking the Word of God

STIRRING OF THE HEART

It can begin with a thought, a song, a word. Or perhaps an emotional tug that swirls through your heart like a recurring melody that refuses to depart. For a moment, a day, maybe much longer. Ever whispering. Ever nudging. Ever growing.

That is, if you listen.

In the beginning the Holy Spirit moved over the dark, formless void of the waters and stirred them in preparation for God’s magnificent work of creation. This same Spirit now rouses the believer’s heart to accomplish the Lord’s sovereign plan in this age.

Have you experienced this flow of the Spirit that moves through you like a current? How have you responded? Have the crashing tidal waves of life drowned the sound of His whisper and swept you away from the blessing of obedience? Or have you disciplined yourself to be still, to be quiet, and tuned your ear to hear when the Spirit of God stirs your heart?

If you turn away from the Spirit’s prompting, He will find another heart. A heart that desires to please God. Another heart who will do what you refused to do and you will miss the blessing. But if you choose to allow the Spirit to fill you, you will become like a mighty river that swells and grows with purpose and direction under the power of God’s hand.

In 539 B.C. God stirred the heart of Cyrus, King of Persia, just as Isaiah prophesied.

“It is I who says of Cyrus, He is My shepherd! And he will perform all My desire. And he declares of Jerusalem, She will be built and of the temple, Your foundation will be laid” (Isaiah 44:28 NAS).

God called Cyrus by name, one hundred seventy-five years before he was born. His purpose was already anointed and at the appointed time the Holy Spirit stirred this king’s heart. And Cyrus listened.

He released those Israelites whose hearts were also moved by the Spirit of God to return to Jerusalem to build a house for the Lord God. And Cyrus paid all the building costs.

Then the king went into the treasuries of Babylon and brought out all the vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had removed from God’s temple, before he destroyed and burned Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and Cyrus returned them to the new temple in Jerusalem.

The Book of Ezra records how God moved the heart of this pagan king, the Jewish people, the priests and the Levites to rebuild the House of God and the Holy City of God at the appointed time.

But how about your appointed time? How long has it been since the Spirit of God stirred your heart? To rebuild a broken relationship. To listen for the whisper of the Spirit’s direction to complete God’s plan in your family, your church, or your nation. To anoint you as a conduit to pour out His love, His grace and His mercy on the hurting folks your life touches every day.

The Book of James tells us faith without action is dead faith. To maintain true faith we must be continually stirred, filled and spilled by the Spirit’s work in our heart.

“For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead”(James 2:26 NAS).

God uses the testimony of His work in our lives to encourage and give understanding to others for the sake of the Kingdom. Would you tell us how God, through His Spirit, has stirred your heart. Did you respond? When? How and what did God do as you listened and obeyed?

Or perhaps yours is a word of warning. A warning that teaches us not to quench or ignore the whisper of His Spirit. A warning about missed opportunities for blessings.

I encourage you to encourage one another with an affirmation of your words that God’s Spirit still moves in obedient hearts today.

“For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His” (II Chronicles 16:9 NAS).

DiAne,
We heard the Lord tell us to adopt a four-year-old girl.
Our lives have never been the same.
God used that poor, broken one to force us to face Him. Nothing we did ever really helped her and when she was 15, we were forced to place her in a home for wayward girls. Even there, the workers had our same experience. She just was incorrigible, eventually landing in prison for drugs.
But the brokenness we experienced! Oh, the heart-wrenching! We now know a tiny fraction of how it feels to love someone who does not love in return—essentially how God feels when we refuse Him—just a tiny portion. Who could ever bear more?
We made so many radical changes in our lives, changes we never would have contemplated, except to save a little girl’s heart. We are better because of her. How it hurts to realize God’s purpose. He knew we would batter our hearts to pieces for her sake and we would be better in the end.
It hurts, even today, when she is 40 years old and a broken woman, herself, to say God used her—all her woundedness, her abandoned state, her undiagnosed fetal alcohol syndrome, and her tough exterior which we seldom could penetrate—to make us usable people in His kingdom.
It just, plain, hurts.
But it is good.

Katharine, thank you so much for being transparent and validating pain.

Some folks believe that Christians shouldn’t experience pain. But that’s a lie straight from the pit. I don’t know who said this but, like you, I know it’s true…”God never uses anyone greatly unless He allows them to be hurt deeply.”

I don’t know about the greatly used part, but I do know our family has gone through deep pain too. Not like your pain, but still pain. And we have all learned to endure and have come to hate what God hates . . . sin, death and the grave. Sometimes dying and being buried aren’t the only death and grave. When we’ve gone through the wilderness of trials beyond our ability to bear and we experience the death of relationships as we thought they should be, we must crucify our expectations along that wilderness journey. And that’s so hard. So painful too.

However, we learn that when we endure, like you said, God makes us usable people for the Kingdom. And that’s the good Romans 8:28-29 talks about. We hang onto God’s promise spoken through Paul that “our light and momentary afflictions” will be as nothing when we see and experience the joy, the healing, and the restoration that is to come.

Have a blessed and thankful holy week. Our Lord has risen…He has risen indeed!

And that’s where faith, real faith comes in. Recognizing His sovereignty and trusting Him completely. Even when things don’t work out. Even when there seems to be no hope. Even in the really bad times He is faithful. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 NAS).

Oh, and I meant to add:
There is a brand new Christian woman in our church, an ex-alcoholic, who is blooming so beautifully before our very eyes, and who has accumulated so much wisdom during her down days outside. She recently said, “Once you’ve been broken, you know how to recognize others who’re going through being broken.”
She is less than a year old in the Lord, but already she sees. So gratifying!

Only God can do that Katharine. Only God. And isn’t it amazing that He allows us to see this so that we can give all the honor and glory to the Lamb? Keep on keeping on, because there’s much work to be done and so little time left to do what He asked.

I am learning more and more to listen to those stirrings. Perhaps it is easier when you are past the child rearing years and your focus isn’t on raising the kids and all that comes with it. I’m not sure but I do know that where I am now in my life, the Lord is placing people in my path.

In our church a year ago I sat behind a man and his teenage son. Something about that situation pricked my heart and I prayed for them. Later this man came before me again…..and then again… and again. Each time I’d pray for him. I knew nothing about him until one day he showed up in my single parent class. From that he came to DivorceCare. He is now one of my faithful in DC and in our single parent class. Strong Christian man with 3 children he is raising by himself. He was amazed when I told him I had started praying for him over a a year ago.

The Lord also laid a couple on my heart a few months ago – just a passing thought really. She is another program I’m in and had missed one week. I felt the Lord urging me to call her. When I asked if she was alright, I found out her husband has moved out. The Lord has given me opportunity to draw close to her, to love her through this time and to encourage her. What if I had not listened to the prompting of the Holy Spirit? She would be suffering alone.

Time after time He calls. Besides doing the Lord’s work it is so exciting to me to get to be involved in these lives. Gives me a change to give back to God and to appreciate even more His mercy and goodness to me.

Oh Linda, you’ve just poured from your heart the exact message that whirls through mine. After the death of our daughter, twelve years ago, God brought me to GriefShare and like you said, perhaps it’s the time of our lives when we are more able to focus and listen. But I really believe that God uses these tragic times to get our attention. To shape us. To mold us. And as Katharine said “to make us usable people for the Kingdom.”

When our Michelle died I learned up-close-and-personal that I wasn’t in control of anything, especially myself. Because of the pain He allowed me to experience I was able to receive the comfort He poured out on me. And praise God, now He allows me to be a conduit of His comfort for others entering that life-death-life journey Dr. Paul Tripp talks about.

I hope you read Katharine’s post to this blog last night. We all have a common thread that runs through our lives…in the midst of our pain God pours out His comfort and teaches us to become comforters to others. And that’s why we’re here. Why we’re the Church. To be His arms of comfort and healing to the multitude of hurting, suffering folks that surround us each day.

Thank God for the stirring of our hearts. May we never heal so completely that we forget or neglect to listen and respond to His stirring.

DiAne is an artist, writer, photographer, and GriefShare facilitator who also leads an adult edit group for North Texas Christian Writers, LifeSavers is for adults who are serious about their writing skills.
DiAne's YA novel "Roped" released by Prism Book Group was named a YA finalist for the Grace Awards, finaled in The Christian Literary Henri Awards for 2016, and was named #5 in The Top Ten Christian Reads for Teens and Tweens 2016.
The second book, TWISTED, in the Roped Series was released by Pelican Book Group, July 14, 2017. Both are available on Amazon.com. Be sure to check DiAne's blog, "Moving the Ancient Boundaries" at https://dianegates.wordpress.com/